Category Archives: Creative coding sessions 17

This week the Go_Girls and staff members came together for an afternoon of pizza and good conversation. It was exciting to hear about the education and career plans of the young women. They are pursuing a variety of options including … Continue reading →

After months of hard work, learning (and fun, of course!) the Go_Girl Awards Ceremony had finally arrived! This evening would give us a chance to celebrate all of the achievements that the girls have made over the past year, and … Continue reading →

At the beginning of the month the world celebrated Autism Awareness Day. Autism is a topic of great importance to the Go_Girl team, especially due to the fact that a number of the Go_Girls identify as autistic. Today we were … Continue reading →

It’s hard to believe that we are approaching the last stages of the Go_Girl 2017-18 program! The time has flown by and so much has been achieved. However, we all want to make sure that the progress that has been … Continue reading →

The Go_Girls continue to keep up the momentum and push forward with their projects! Some are adding to and fine-tuning their work. Others are nearly done with their original projects and are creating an additional one to complement the original … Continue reading →

With the Easter break just over the horizon, the whole team felt extra motivated this week to make good headway with their projects. However, keeping up the momentum on longer term initiatives can sometimes be tricky. Life throws curveballs when … Continue reading →

With almost 2 months to go until the final ceremony, the Go_Girls are hard at work on their individual projects. These range from a game in Unity to websites, to apps, and even games in Scratch. To give the young … Continue reading →

One of the key issues that the Go_Girl project aims to shed light on is the lack of women pursuing STEM study and careers. Despite the growing amount of research that explores this problem, we need to delve deeper into … Continue reading →

What do you think of when you hear the word ‘apprenticeship’? Do certain careers come to mind? Or a certain type of person? How do you view apprenticeships in general? With this week being National Apprenticeship week we started off … Continue reading →

The ‘Beast from the East’ was in full force this week, smothering Oxford in a blanket of fresh snowy powder blown in by icy winds. Sadly the Wednesday session had to be cancelled due to road safety concerns, but the … Continue reading →

Go_Girl is, as the name suggests, a project specifically for female-identifying young people. By its very nature, then, Go_Girl is built on the feminist notion that there is value in a women-only, peer supportive space. The program also recognises that gender, … Continue reading →

On February 6th the Go_Girl team headed off to the ninth annual ‘Careers Fest’ at the Oxford MINI Plant. Over all, we had a great experience. There were lots of interesting companies to talk to. UK Atomic Energy Agency, Microsoft, Sophos, … Continue reading →

Leading on from last week’s inspiring career advice afternoon with Kiki McDonough, the Go_Girls have decided to attend an upcoming job fair. Hosted in the Oxford MINI Plant by OxLEP, the Careers Fest on the 6th of February is a … Continue reading →

As the famous saying goes, if you follow your passion you will never have to work a day in your life. But how do you find what really motivates you? And once you’ve found your raison d’être, how can you … Continue reading →

The first Go_Girl session since the Christmas break went off with a bang! The festive period, a difficult time for many across the country, was especially tricky for many of the Go_Girls. It was so wonderful to all get together … Continue reading →

Our last session before the Christmas/New Year holiday was a fantastic one! Bill Liao visited the Go_Girls to share his story of going from a high school dropout to an extremely successful entrepreneur, philanthropist, author and speaker. He also shared … Continue reading →

Jo Hannaford, Partner and Head of the EMEA Technology Division and global head of Quality Assurance Engineering at Goldman Sachs, along with her husband Jon, paid a visit to the Go_Girls and shared stories about her journey from being a … Continue reading →

After the great success of Cathy’s visit, we are very lucky to also be receiving a visit from Jo Hannaford, Head of EMEA Technology & Global Head of Quality Assurance Engineering at Goldman Sachs. She has been a big supporter of … Continue reading →

Coding our own embroidery on Turtlestitch has really inspired the Go_Girl team. Many of the young women are creative spirits, and it has been exciting to explore the ways that technology can enhance our artistic endeavours. But making it in … Continue reading →

Inspired by Julian Box talking about tech careers last week, this Go_Girl session tackled the issue of CVs. The average time a recruiter will spend looking at a CV is 5-7 seconds, and 76% of CVs are ignored if the … Continue reading →

This week the Go_Girls got to build on their presentation and Scratch skills. Giving short presentations each week on topics including technology-related jobs, and what it is like to be a young NEET in Oxfordshire, helps the young women to … Continue reading →

After a well-earned half term break the Go_Girls were back in the classroom and raring to get going. As with every session, we began with a group feedback exercise where the young women get to share what they’ve been up … Continue reading →

Do you enjoy giving presentations? When asked this question, many people will respond with an abrupt ‘No!’. A study conducted in 2012, for example, found that ‘public speaking’ is a more commonly listed fear than ‘death’! That’s my halloween outfit … Continue reading →

This week the Go_Girls got straight back into Scratch with a fun and challenging task. The young women were asked to create a ‘guessing game’ using the skills they had learnt last week. The little ‘sprite’, or animated character, central … Continue reading →

Are you an angry birds devotee? Or perhaps you’re more of a FIFA fan? If neither of those options appeal, then surely you’ve enjoyed a round of Pac-Man or Tetris in your time? Online gaming is a global phenomenon – … Continue reading →

The Internet is everywhere – but do we know how to define it? This week the Go_Girls explored the difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web, as well as coding their own webpage. Impressive going for a grey … Continue reading →

Following on from the great success of last week’s blogging session, this week saw the Go_Girls continue to work on their individual sites. Some of the young women have been working on their blogs in their own free time, adding … Continue reading →

The Go_Girls enjoyed a fun-filled summer with trips to Bourmouth Beach and Cadbury World. The summer fun has come to an end. However, our exciting fall sessions are now in full swing! We kicked off our first meeting with an … Continue reading →

It is hard to believe that we are at the end of the Go_Girl summer term! The last eight weeks have far exceeded everyone’s expectations in terms of the young women’s progress. They are very much on the way to … Continue reading →

For the penultimate session before the summer break the Go_Girls had a visit from Helena and Menisha, researchers from the Computer Science department at Oxford. As well as giving us some fascinating internet facts (Most popular celeb on Instagram? Selena … Continue reading →

This week the Go_Girls tackled one of the most talked about pressures of our time – body image. Anyone with Instagram knows that tanned, toned (and more often than not edited) selfies are de rigueur on this social app. It’s … Continue reading →

We had an excellent week this week, where we continued our dicussions with the young women about being safe online. We kicked off both our sessions with a conversation about finance, debt and benefits that the young women had with … Continue reading →

This week we focused on relationships. After our routine check-in we jumped right in by discussing what makes up both healthy and unhealthy relationships. For healthy relationships we found that trust, support, compassion and being able to banter without taking … Continue reading →

This week’s session was action packed, and intense, and all the go_girls and staff worked hard to challenge some of the notions of what coding is and how to think about it, and to push the boundaries of their comfort. … Continue reading →

Today’s session started with a weekly check-in, a time for each Go_Girl to share and discuss their weekly activities with the group. After the check-in, we had an enlightening lesson on finances. Some of the topics discussed were credit, interest rates, … Continue reading →

The second session of go_girl had a lot to live up to after the huge success of week 1. Unsurprisingly, however, week 2 proved to be another fantastic afternoon full of insightful discussions and fun activities. I was lucky enough … Continue reading →

We’re so thrilled to be back with a new group of ambitious young women and had our first session of the year. We spent the session getting to know each other through different ice breaker activities, discussing everyone’s expectations … Continue reading →

At a glance

go_girl: code+create is a project at the Department of Education, University of Oxford, run in partnership with the Oxfordshire County Council's Early Intervention Service. In line with Oxford’s targets in its Access Agreement with the Office for Fair Access, this interdisciplinary project complements existing programmes aimed at widening access to the University of Oxford, but tackles the problem in a fundamentally new way using technology. The research was originally supported by the University of Oxford IT Innovation Challenges Seed Fund and has received subsequent funding from Goldman Sachs Gives.